大象传媒

1943

The first day began very well indeed. I was awakened by the sergeant鈥檚 mess orderly with a cup of tea. The whole day was occupied attending a court of enquiry as to the cause of yesterday鈥檚 accident and like all such investigations became rather boring to people such as myself who had only a very minor part to play in the proceedings.

The next four days were spent on another 鈥淒rill Order鈥�. The weather was dull and wet and we had to 鈥渄ig-in鈥�, a most unpleasant job. The whole problem was that we were expected to dig a command post into the ground, a particularly dirty and exhausting job and at the same time carry on our normal duties which required a fair amount of plotting enemy and our own troops positions on to artillery boards and that is almost impossible with hands covered with mud and that tended to be unsteady as a result of the physical effort. However, we managed reasonably well by changing jobs every half hour or so. The nights were extremely cold and very wet about this time and on the first day out one of the motorbikes became bogged down in the mud and had to be abandoned for the time being. As part of the exercise we were restricted to two blankets per man and they proved totally inadequate as a means of keeping out the biting cold. During the night we managed to keep warm with the help of lots of hot tea and soup. On the last day the weather changed abruptly becoming windy, but quite warm, which was a relief from the generally miserable conditions at this time of the year and we all returned to camp in good spirits for really we were very fit and nobody worried very much about the conditions.

The following three days were take up with routine maintenance during which I found time to visit Kirkuk and have a new glass put in my watch. In some ways the part of the town we were allowed to visit was quite interesting. For instance, the shops were open fronted, there were also a number of silversmiths who seemed to specialise in filigree work and would make jewellery to order and would include decorations in gold to order. I was told they used Persian silver and Turkish gold but I could not vouch for that information. They also undertook work in other metals and seemed always to have a charcoal fire on the go.

During one evening in the sergeant鈥檚 mess, we took part in a long discussion on the various facets of soccer and the following night we all had a jolly time telling jokes and singing songs, assisted by rather more beer that we could safely manage.

January 9th proved to be most enjoyable from my point of view. I took part in a cross country run at 1130 hours and was delighted to finish in seventh place which I thought very good considering I was made for two hundred and twenty yard sprints. In the afternoon I watched the regiment play the combined anti-aircraft units at soccer and win 1-0. Most of the evening was taken up with a film called 鈥淒iplomaniacs鈥� starring Wheeler and Woolsey followed by another visit to the mess and a few more beers.

Sunday 10thdawned and thankfully reveille was late on this day of rest. After breakfast I began the construction of a 鈥淢iniature Range鈥� which is really a model of a stretch of countrywide with little houses, roads, trees, hedges, etc and which, when completed could be very effectively used for the purpose of practising all the complicated series of orders needed to be given by observation post officers before a shell is fired. The range was about eight feet square, five fee off the ground and the countryside effect was obtained by stretching some material such as sacking over a wire mesh and then formed to give the necessary hills, valleys and so on. The canvas was painted to the appropriate colours such as yellow for sand or corn, green for fields and blue for rivers and when completed it looked quite realistic. According to the orders given by the observation post offer, two people working underneath the range could very quickly calculate where a shell would fall and put up a little puff of smoke at the precise spot. It took several days to complete the 鈥渞ange鈥� but it was worth the effort and it worked very well.

Between now and the end of March we went out at regular intervals on exercises and for a lot of the time the weather was wet and cold. On several occasions we had to 鈥渄ig-in鈥� which meant that the physical effort on top of all the routine specialists work left us fairly tired at the end of each trip of two or three days. However, it was all good experience and we certainly became well acquainted with the countryside and of course it was obviously necessary that we be in first class order just in case the Germans should break through the Caucasus although the possibility of such an event happening was tending to fade as the enemy became bogged down on the Russian front. Sometimes we were awake for a good part of the night working out barrages which on odd occasions were actually fired off, in part, early the next morning. As an instance, on January 20th we left camp during the morning and I rode a Matchless 350 motorbike. The move carried on during the remainder of the day and all night as well. It was wet and cold and when we finally 鈥渨ent into action鈥� in the morning there was a thick mist about, which ultimately gave way to sunshine as the weather warmed up during the day. That night there was more heavy rain and we had very little sleep but luckily those men with wet blankets were able to dry them in the following days sun. Again, for most of the third night we received a soaking and I was so tired that I stopped in the pitch dark, when the column of vehicles ground to a halt for an hour and slept sitting on my motorbike. The road had become very sticky and later that same night we crossed the Little Zab river by pontoon and on my bike it was very unpleasant. The next morning we took up three gun positions, which was good going. The exercise ended at midday and we arrived back at camp by 1730 hours. Only four of us succeeded in riding our bikes back on the very slippery roads. However, the previous night had not passed without its tragedy, for two young riflemen of the 1st London Irish Rifles were lost when their canvas assault boat capsized in the swiftly flowing waters of the Little Zab.

On January 23rd, we heard on the radio that British troops had entered Tripoli at 0800 hours.

Between exercises I went to Kirkuk to see 鈥淔risco Kid鈥� which I rated as not very good and on my return to camp at 2300 hours made some tea before going to bed. The next day or so was employed making racks out of steel tubes which ultimately were bolted on to the tops of the two command post staff trucks. We had found that these fifteen hundred weight vehicles were not large enough to take both our equipment and our kits in addition to our command post signallers and their wirelesses, etc.

I found myself detailed for Regimental Orderly Sergeant and guard sergeant within three days over this period, but nevertheless also managed to watch two football matches. The regiment lost 1-0 against 90th Field Regiment RA , but in this instance the gloom was relieved so far as I was concerned by the Regimental Orderly Officer, who gave me a drink as we were both on duty together, which was very kind of him. In the other match our battery beat one of the other two batteries by the same score. In between times we took part in a command post exercise and a signals competition just to keep us in good practice and to make sure there was no slacking!

On the 3rd February Eddie and a small party went off to Mosul, some sixty miles to the north to obtain some stores. This town is of course close to the ruins of ancient Ninevah, which in the dim and distant past was the capital of ancient Assyria and was discovered by Henry Layard in 1845. It contained the famous library of King Ashurbanipal from which twenty two thousand cuneiform tablets were sent to the British Museum, I would like very much to have been on that journey, just to have been near such an historically important Old Testament city. A city, which if I remember correctly, the prophets regularly denounced for the wicked goings on within its walls.

Returning to the present, on 12th February we had a 鈥渟pecialists鈥� examination and I was pleased and very relieved to come out top, as of course I should have! Nevertheless it was good to have it in black and white. Next the whole battery went out for an exercise lasting three days during which we had to dig-in several times. That was followed by a series of quick action exercises where, in a make believe and rapidly moving war, we had to rush into and out of action at top speed. This was really hard work for everybody whether gunners, signallers or specialists. Afterwards more lectures on such subject as 鈥渃hange of grid鈥� or in other words linking up, on an army scale, the exact position of our guns in relation to all the other guns employed.

One afternoon a novel form of exercise was introduced which consisted of manhandling our 25 pounder guns across the desert. As they weighed some one or more tons each, it soon became exhausting work. This bright idea lasted for a few weeks and then quietly faded away. I can also recall that we underwent periods of physical training which was all the go for a while, then became intermittent and finally was relegated to those occasions when there was a complete blank in the daily routine.

Another afternoon was occupied on an anti-malarial hunt around the local village and any stagnant pools were treated by pouring oil on them and setting light to them. On one Sunday morning I was in charge of a fatigue party collecting, of all things, mud bricks. About this time a revolver disappeared and on several occasions we formed search parties and scoured the whole area but it was never found. During this period I was able to visit Kirkuk a couple of times, once with Ernie and on the other occasion with Ernie, Eddie and Dave.

On February 23rd we were told by our battery commander that we would soon be going into action. In fact, it was exactly two months later that we did so. March 7th dawned with a chill feel about it and a heavy fall of snow. The temperature at 0900 hours was near to zero and a trick of the light gave the whole landscape a weird pale green effect but the sun made its appearance at 10.30 hours and the snow quickly disappeared.

All of this was followed by a series of one day outings to polish up various facets of gunnery. In between times most of us saw a film called 鈥淢asquerade鈥� at the local cinema. Some of us played in a series of football matches. We fired our Thompson sub-machine guns and had TAB injections. The weather was very changeable with heavy rain from time to time turning the ground into a bog. One night when on guard, I had to take out a patrol which in the pitch darkness was hazardous only so far as there was a risk of breaking the odd bone by falling over on uneven ground. Luckily nothing unusual occurred.

Five days after the TAB we were vaccinated but probably because we had been done several times before it appeared to have little effect. I played football the same afternoon and in the evening went out to see the film 鈥淭om Browns Schooldays鈥�. In the morning I attended a mine sowing demonstration and as the weather had momentarily turned very warm, occupied part of the afternoon washing all my dirty clothes. We then ran into a further patch of rain which was enlivened by a sergeant鈥檚 mess booze-up and that in turn came to a rather sudden end when two of the members took exception to each other and had a good old stand up fight.

March 26th was a red letter day for after an MO鈥檚 inspection, we were all taken away for a bath! About this time we saw two films 鈥淭he Girl and the Gambler鈥� which I rated passable and Laurel and Hardy in 鈥淕reat Guns鈥�, which was most enjoyable and this latter picture was followed by a supper of eggs.

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